St John­stone’s open­ing foray into Europe fell flat last night af­ter they went down 2-1 at home to Lithua­nian side FK Trakai in the Europa League 1st qual­i­fy­ing round.

St John­stone will have to do it the hard way if they are to progress to the sec­ond qual­i­fy­ing round of the Europa League.

The Perth men were beaten 2-1 by FK Trakai at Mc­Di­armid Park last night, with all three goals com­ing in the first half.

The Lithua­ni­ans showed why they are sec­ond top of their do­mes­tic league, with an im­pres­sive dis­play against Tommy Wright’s men putting them in the driv­ing seat for the re­turn leg on Thursday.

As well as Joe Shaugh­nessy’s goal, there were sev­eral other near-misses for Saints, which has given the Perth boss rea­son to be­lieve it is far from mis­sion impossible in Vil­nius.

He said: “I wouldn’t rule us out yet. There is more to come from us. There are things we need to be bet­ter at but I know we can go over there and win the game. It would be fool­ish to write us off. We caused them prob­lems and got into good po­si­tions but made the wrong de­ci­sion.”

Wright con­tin­ued: “We have to learn from that but the way we got in be­hind them gives me en­cour­age­ment.